In 2005 Tanya Vlach lost her eye to an auto accident and now 3 years later, she is hoping technology could turn her partial loss of vision into a fascinating opportunity. On Vlach’s blog, she has issued a challenge to engineers to build her a new prosthetic eye that can function as a webcam. With it she explains on her blog, she is, “interested in capitalizing on the current advancement of technology to enhance the abilities of my prosthesis for an augmented reality.”{ad}

Vlach, self desrcribed as a sort of sci-fi geek, also knows exactly what she wants for her new eye. She has a shopping list of features that she determined from her research on miniature video cameras. These features for her new eye include varying qualities like:

DVR

MPEG-4? Recording

Built in SD mini Card Slot

4 GB SD mini Card

Mini A/V out

Firewire / USB drive

Optical 3X

Remote trigger

Bluetooth wireless method

Inductors: (Firewire/USB, power source)

Granted, if she is successful with finding the right engineer to create a webcam prosthetic – with these options, she won’t be as good as Steve Austin. That’s okay with her, though, as she is not looking to be a spy. Vlach states:

I don’t want to be a spy and infringe on people’s rights, and at the same time, there are amazing possibilities.